News: 0180079090

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Sony Killed This Game in 2024. Three Developers Reverse-Engineered It Back to Life (aftermath.site)

(Saturday November 15, 2025 @05:22PM (EditorDavid) from the still-alive dept.)


An anonymous reader shared [1]this post from the gaming news site Aftermath :

> Concord , Sony Interactive Entertainment and Firewalk Studios' [2] Overwatch -like shooter , was live for just two weeks before it was pulled offline. Though Concord [3]certainly had some dedicated players , it didn't have many — which is why it may be surprising to hear that a group of players are reverse-engineering the game and its servers to bring it back to life.

>

> Publisher Sony removed Concord from stores and digital marketplaces, automatically refunded some, and, later, [4]shut down Firewalk Studios . Two hundred or so people were laid off, and any hopes of Concord's return were dashed. Poor sales — [5]estimated to be under 25,000 copies sold — and low player numbers marred the release. Firewalk Studios' [6]game director Ryan Ellis said in a blog post that pieces of the game "resonated with players," but "other aspects of the game and

Concord 's] initial launch didn't land the way [Firewalk Studios] intended."

>

> Concord wasn't a bad game, but it just didn't generate enough interest with enough players. Now, a group of three hobbyist reverse-engineers, who go by real, Red, and gwog online, are trying to make it playable again... "Sometimes there's enough of the server left in the game, that we can 'activate' that code and make the game believe it's a server," Red said. "We do pretty much always need to fill in the gaps though..." Concord used an anti-tamper software to keep people from cheating, which also creates a problem for people reverse engineering. It's "nearly impossible" to crack, Red said, so the group didn't — they found an exploit to "forcefully decrypt the game's code" to "restore the game and start working on servers...."

>

> It's not open to the public, but people can sign up for future tests. Even former Firewalk Studios employees have joined the server. They're excited to see Concord come back to life, too, the developers said.

"Friday morning, a video of the playtest was [7]posted to the Concord Reddit page ," according to the article. (Though ironically by Friday night YouTube had had [8]removed the video "due to a copyright claim by MarkScan Enforcement."



[1] https://aftermath.site/concord-dead-game-firewalk-sony/

[2] https://aftermath.site/podcasts/aftermath-hours-podcast-concord-failure-sony-steam/

[3] https://www.polygon.com/playstation/448419/concord-gameplay-final-hours-close-servers-offline-time-date/

[4] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/29/24282900/sony-shutting-down-concord-firewalk-studios

[5] https://www.ign.com/articles/concord-is-estimated-to-have-sold-only-25000-units-heres-why-analysts-think-its-failing

[6] https://blog.playstation.com/2024/09/03/an-important-update-on-concord/

[7] https://www.reddit.com/r/ConcordGame/comments/1owxnp4/concord_is_now_running_on_custom_servers/

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahpUW5Gbfi0




Please do not feed ... (Score:2)

by PPH ( 736903 )

... Sony's legal department.

too much time on their hands (Score:2, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward

Good for those three people, but there are more people working on 2BSD. Which is at least a useful endeavor from a historical context. Unless you want to play a FPS as a fat black woman I am struggling to understand what value Concord adds.

Re: (Score:3)

by JamesTRexx ( 675890 )

That's the beauty of software, it doesn't have to be of value to anyone but those who put effort in it.

Not a bad game, no... (Score:5, Insightful)

by Chris Mattern ( 191822 )

It was worse. It was a mediocre game that was *really* ugly and was going up against entrenched competition that outclassed it six ways from Sunday.

Re: (Score:3)

by rsilvergun ( 571051 )

It's just crazy how much money was spend making that mediocre game. Something like 400 million.

You would think the CEO responsible for that disaster would be drummed out of the industry and never work again but I don't even think they bothered to fire him from Sony. I think it's pretty obvious that the fucker was trying to throw money to create a big franchise so that he could move up in the company. It must be nice to waste hundreds of millions of dollars through mismanagement to advance your career an

You are false data.